NOTES | Oh, God, the way I made y'all wait so long. I am so sorry! I will try to do better next time. Here we go, the second chapter from Tammy's perspective – the story will swap back and forth between the two of them as we go. I hope you enjoy!
She can't sleep.
She discovered the astronomy tower in second year. Or, technically, in first year, but discovering a place like this by attending a weekly class there is rather different from discovering it all on her own. There's a quiet serenity to it, the top of this tallest tower with stars blinking down from overhead, after the night's classes have come to a close. She stumbled upon it mostly by accident, in the cold winter after her father's death, when she kept waking up from dreams filled with flames.
Sneaking out after curfew isn't something that Tamara Maria Prescott does, typically. But something vital changed in her over Christmas break that year, and perhaps she'll never be the same as she used to be. The first night that she crept out of Ravenclaw Tower, she wandered around the castle aimlessly. Putting one foot in front of the other felt like methodically chasing the nightmares out of her head, and so she kept going, and going, and going. And eventually, she reached the top of a tower where she could look out at the rolling hills surrounding Hogwarts, and it made her feel like maybe she was healing. Just a little bit.
So the next night, she went back.
This year, after she pinned a shiny prefect's badge onto her robes, it's been easier to get here. She doesn't have to steal through the shadows and edge around corners anymore; she can walk purposefully from one end of the castle to the other at midnight without anyone batting an eye at her. It feels a little like cheating, to do this, but sometimes she just needs to climb the stairs to the top of the astronomy tower and sit there for a while, see the stars, hear the hushed sounds of nighttime when everyone else has their eyes closed. It's cathartic, to escape whatever needs escaping from. The nightmares that still linger in the depths of her subconscious, or the stress about her upcoming OWLs, or the worry hanging over her like a cloud since she went home for Easter.
Her mother changed after they lost her father, too. Like something broke. The house feels a little bit too big when Tammy comes back for breaks, and she can't even imagine how empty it must seem when she isn't there, either. She thought about not going back, for third year – a Muggle public school would mean afternoons, nights, weekends, with her mother, so that she wouldn't have to be alone – but her mum wouldn't hear of it. Put her foot down and her voice sounded stronger than it had in weeks (months?), so Tammy let herself board the train on the first day of September, in the end.
She likes to spend as much time as she can with her mum, when there's no school. And when she's at Hogwarts, they write to each other constantly; she gets a letter tied carefully to her owl's leg twice a week, sometimes three times. They write even when there's nothing particularly exciting to be written. But maybe some things get left out. Like how when Tammy went home for Easter this year, the house felt different all over again. Her mother lit candles instead of turning on the lights. There was less food in the kitchen and a pile of bills on the counter that hadn't been paid yet, and none of Tammy's questions got real answers.
Maybe that's part of the reason why her upcoming OWLs are occupying her thoughts so heavily. Academic success has always been important to her, since day one, but now there's an extra layer to it. Because the OWLs will determine what classes she can take for her last two years at Hogwarts, and then the NEWTs in seventh year will lay out her entire future for her. If she can get a good job, she can help her mother pay the bills, turn the lights back on, make sure everything is okay. It's just that getting there is unimaginably difficult, and Tammy has been studying to the point of near-obsession since returning to the castle at the beginning of April, and she still doesn't feel ready.
She should probably be studying right now, curled up in an armchair in the Ravenclaw common room with her potions textbook, but she doesn't know if she can focus.
They were learning Incendio in charms, today. The fire-making spell.
Tammy tried to sleep already, but it didn't last long. All that played on the insides of her eyelids when she drifted off were images of sparks flying, flames licking their way up all the walls in the building where her father died trying to save the people who lived there.
So she's followed the now-familiar path down the stairs from her dormitory, along the corridors, up into the astronomy tower, and she sits at the edge with her feet hanging off into the open air through the railing. She picks absentmindedly at a loose thread on the hem of her sleeve. And when she's been there for twenty minutes, she hears it.
Footsteps, climbing purposefully up the stairs.
She isn't exactly sure what she expects. Maybe Professor Reyes, having left something behind after the third-year class finished their star charts. Or maybe Tess, who's always incredibly diligent when she's on patrol, which is probably why she was made Head Girl this year. Stiffening momentarily, Tammy readies herself to explain precisely why she is up here, staring out at the stars, when she's not actually scheduled on patrol and there is nobody left to patrol here, anyway.
It's all proven unnecessary when the newcomer reaches the top of the staircase and steps out into the open, though, and it turns out to be Debbie Ocean.
For a moment, they just look at each other, wide-eyed. Tammy wonders if they're both thinking the same thing: She could get Debbie in trouble, right now, if she wanted to. Dock points from Gryffindor, dole out a detention or two, get some sort of misguided revenge for what Lou Miller did to Daphne during Quidditch practice earlier. The girl has no real defence for being out past curfew, wearing pyjama pants and a thick knitted cardigan, up at the top of the astronomy tower when she should be sound asleep. She should lose house points, at the very least.
But Tammy doesn't say a word, and after a moment, Debbie takes a step forward. She pulls the edges of her sweater closer together and quietly sits down two feet to Tammy's left, pointedly looking straight ahead. Tammy imagines a clock ticking, counting the seconds until one of them breaks the silence. It's Debbie who does it, in the end.
"This is my spot, you know." She says it mildly, like she's talking about the weather.
Tammy glances sideways. Her spot? She's been coming here – irregularly, but frequently enough – for over three years now, and she's never seen another person up here, not once. She's still fiddling with that loose thread, and she twists her fingers so it snaps away from the fabric entirely. "I've been coming here since second year," she answers.
If there's one thing she's learned about Debbie Ocean over the last five years of seeing her from a distance, across classrooms and down corridors, it's that she does not often let whatever's going on inside her head to make it up to the surface. Her brother doesn't, either, and while their mother is perhaps softer, she carries that same energy in her bones. Tammy has never seen Elijah Ocean in person, but she's seen pictures of him in the Daily Prophet, and he's got that cool, detached confidence seeping out of every pore, too. Maybe it's something that runs in the family, and you have to look closer to catch a glimpse of anything lingering underneath it. Like now, how she's close enough to see just the slightest frown tug at Debbie's face. "Me, too," she says, shrugging. Her sweater slips off one shoulder a little, and she doesn't make a move to fix it.
She wonders what makes Debbie come here. She doesn't think she'd want to take this place away from someone else, not if sitting up here at night heals little parts of Debbie deep down, too.
"Maybe we've just been here on different nights," Tammy suggests, offering the other girl a small smile. It's not returned, and she isn't even sure whether Debbie saw it to begin with; she's still looking straight ahead, over the top of the lake into the mountains. Hesitating, Tammy tests words on her tongue silently until the quiet feels like it's stretched on for too long. "We can share it," she ends up saying, a little awkwardly and rather belatedly. "The spot, I mean."
Debbie doesn't answer, but she nods, nearly imperceptibly.
After that, they don't say anything at all. Just sit there, side by side, with their gazes fixed ahead of them. Sometimes, silences like this are tense and unpleasant, but this one feels different. She doesn't feel the compulsive need to break it, which doesn't make any sense at all because they aren't friends. They haven't spent time together even once before. How is it that this feels, somehow, inexplicably, comfortable? Tammy doesn't know what time it is when she finally moves to stand up; her clothes rustle against each other, the first real sound of the hour, and she's almost to the top of the stairs when Debbie's voice, quiet but sure of herself, makes her pause.
"Are you going to tell, or take points or something?" she asks. When Tammy turns, Debbie has twisted around, still seated, to look at her curiously. There's something else in her eyes, too, something that she can't quite figure out how to label. Maybe a little bit apprehensive, maybe a little bit daring. She doesn't exactly know Debbie well enough to tell, for sure. And yet, unbidden, the thought creeps into her head that maybe she could. She pushes it away (it's late, she's tired, that's all, right?) and shakes her head, and Debbie's mouth turns up at the corners, just a little. "Okay. Thanks."
When Tammy gets back to her dormitory and tiptoes past Nine-Ball's bed to climb into her own, she pulls her covers up to her chin and closes her eyes and all she can see is that tiny glimmer of a smile.
She doesn't quite know what to make of that.
In the morning, Amita waves her over to the Hufflepuff table. This is something that Tammy's friends and Debbie's friends have in common: The complete and total disregard for sitting in house-segregated tables at mealtimes. As a prefect, Tammy feels a pang of guilt for setting this example, so she doesn't always join them, but today, she slides into an empty seat and wills herself not to look up at the staff table. If she makes eye contact with a professor, any single one of them, she knows she will feel uncomfortable enough to rush back to the Ravenclaw table.
Instead, she finds herself scanning the Gryffindor table. There is a fifty-percent chance that Debbie's friends are there this morning; they are prone to choosing either Gryffindor or Slytherin, for their unofficial leaders. She locates them easily enough, her attention drawn by Constance Hong's loud and distinctive voice standing out above the rest of the student body's low rumble of noise. Her gaze lingers on Debbie briefly across the Great Hall. Dark hair, dark eyes, shoulders held back, poised as always. She's leaning one shoulder against Lou as Constance speaks animatedly, the plate in front of her untouched. She looks tired, maybe, or is that Tammy's imagination? She wonders how late Debbie stayed up at the top of the astronomy tower before sneaking back to her common room.
Daphne follows her sightline fleetingly and shakes her head. "Miller one-hundred-percent sent that Bludger at me on purpose," she says with a long-suffering sigh. "I cannot believe Marcus is going to let her play on Saturday. That was the most bullshit apology I've ever seen in my life."
Across the room, Debbie glances at Tammy, only for a moment. Nothing in her face changes as they look at each other, and then she breaks eye contact and looks back to Constance. For some unknown reason, Tammy has been holding her breath, and she releases it in a soft whoosh as she tries to focus in on her friends' conversation again.
The owls swoop in from above to drop letters down into waiting hands, and Storm lands in front of her as gracefully as an owl can land on a table filled with food. She unties the letter methodically, unfurls the paper and flattens it out on the tabletop in front of her, scans the first sentence, and freezes. Dear Tammy, it reads. I didn't want to have to break this news in this way, but it's not fair for me to put off telling you that I've lost my job. Her mother fills the rest of the paper, double-sided, with optimism. How it's nobody's fault, really, and how helpful her best friend, Nadine, has been, and how she's already looking for another job. Tammy's heart sinks with every word; she tries to read between the lines for what her mum is actually thinking. She tries to picture it in her mind: Her mum sitting at the kitchen table, tapping her ballpoint pen on the wood as she tries to think of the right words to convey to her daughter that she's okay. Is she? Or is it a lie?
Rose reaches across her girlfriend to poke at Tammy's arm. "You okay?" she asks, frowning.
Tammy folds her mum's letter in half, quarters, eighths, and tucks it into the pocket of her robes out of sight, nodding. "Yeah. Yes, I'm okay." She reaches for her half-eaten bagel, but it tastes stale suddenly. She's known since Easter that her mother's money is dwindling; one salary doesn't go nearly as far as two, and maybe she's had to cut into the savings without Tammy's father's income to supplement her own. But this – God, this makes it feel a thousand times more real.
She can't focus all day. Her thoughts loom over her, casting shadows, drowning out her teachers' words in each class. How long has it been since her mother found herself unemployed? It's not fair for me to put off telling you, she wrote. How long has she been putting it off? Tammy wants to shut herself in a quiet room to write back, but she doesn't know what to say. And besides, there's no time. She has classes straight through from breakfast until dinner, and homework assignments for everything, and then there's prep for her OWLs, on top of everything else. She would welcome the distraction, if she could only concentrate properly.
In the common room, she sets up camp in her favourite armchair in the corner, spreading her books over the low coffee table in front of her. She studies with Nine-Ball in the vaguest sense of the word; maybe they are not friends, specifically, but they have the sort of solidarity that two Muggleborn Ravenclaw girls require in order to function. It's not official, more like sitting near each other with their textbooks open, occasionally speaking to ask a question or clarify a concept – a smooth-running, unspoken system they have grown into by this point. Some nights, when she has a big assignment to work on, Nine-Ball's little sister joins them, though the older girl is constantly nudging the other one to head to bed at a reasonable time. Ronnie is only a second-year, but Tammy thinks that the Stevenson girls possess a rare type of intelligence, the kind that could enable them to take over the world if they wanted to.
Tonight, her head feels like it's spinning, and she can't even keep up with them. Relatively early on, before Nine-Ball even starts to drop heavy hints for Ronnie about what time it is, Tammy snaps her potions book shut and rolls up her half-finished essay methodically. It's not getting anywhere, anyway. "I'm going to bed," she announces, but she can't sleep. Again. She tosses and turns until the rest of the fifth-year girls come in and crawl into their own beds, and then she pulls out a quill and parchment. "Lumos."
The tip of her wand lights up, brightness stretching around the room. Nine-Ball groans and puts her pillow over her head. "Turn that shit off," she mumbles.
"Sorry," Tammy whispers back, ducking underneath her covers. With the light from her wand contained, she tries to fashion some sort of response back to her mother, but she can't get any further than four pathetic little words. Dear Mum, I'm sorry.
At one o'clock, she gives up and makes her way to the astronomy tower again.
She doesn't really expect Debbie to be there, but when she makes it to the top of the stairs, there she is: Sitting in the same place as last night, with another thick sweater on, hair falling in dark waves down her back. She doesn't turn to look when Tammy steps out into the open, only laces her fingers together smoothly in her lap as Tammy sits down. Two feet to Debbie's right, carefully maintaining the exact amount of distance that was settled on yesterday. What is it, she wonders, drawing Debbie out of Gryffindor Tower to come here two nights in the row? What things occupy her thoughts when she can't fall asleep? What worries does this spot chase away for her?
She doesn't ask, though. Debbie speaks up first again, like they're repeating steps they've already been through with only a few key elements changed. "Can't sleep again?"
Tammy shakes her head. Without her permission, words bubble up and into the open. "My mum lost her job," she tells Debbie and the stars. She doesn't know why. "She's a librarian. Or she was." She wraps her arms around herself, although it's nearly June now and the night air is warm enough to be comfortable. "She didn't say why it happened or anything, but I'm… worried about her, I guess. It's been really hard for her since – since my dad died."
It's quiet for a moment, and she thinks perhaps Debbie isn't going to say anything at all. Why should she? They aren't friends, just two people who have discovered they've been stealing away to the same hiding place without realizing it. But just when she's accepted that fact, Debbie clears her throat and says, "Shit, yeah. What was that, third year?"
"Second," amends Tammy quietly. Feeling a little reassured, a little bolder, she lets her voice grow just a touch stronger now. "I almost didn't come back for third."
Debbie glances at her swiftly. "Really? What would you have done, gone to a Muggle school?" Even now, years after the Second Wizarding War, Tammy has learned that many people – purebloods, especially – say that like something dirty. Muggle. Debbie doesn't, though. In her voice, it's only a word. When she nods, the other girl tilts her head to the side, gaze searching Tammy's with something akin to wonder. Or is that something she's imagining, too? "You have magic, though. I can't even fathom ever giving that up."
Sometimes, Tammy gets stuck on that, too, unsure how she could have ever thought that she could let this facet of her life go once she'd had a taste of it. "I just didn't want my mum to have to be alone," she explains, shrugging her shoulders. "I'm glad she didn't let me do it, though. My dad always really loved the idea of… all of this. He'd always ask me a million questions about it, wanted to know pretty much everything. I studied really hard first year so I could answer as many of them as I could." This is, likely, where the extra pressure for academic success came from; she laid out those expectations all on her own, wove them into the fabric of herself until they were all but impossible to separate. "Maybe even with him gone, I just want to make him proud of me."
"I get that. I mean, not exactly. But it makes sense." Turning her head back to face forward, Debbie starts talking, like maybe it's okay now that Tammy's gone first. "My dad's in the Wizengamot. Department of Magical Law Enforcement. I'm going to end up there, too." It sounds hollow, like the empty kind of promise. Like maybe she doesn't know whether or not she's the one making that call. Debbie's words come slowly, hesitantly, gathering momentum a little as she goes. Maybe it's easier for her to talk when she's not looking directly at someone. "And obviously my mum's here, so. She's on my back about OWLs. They're going to define my whole future or… whatever." She looks sideways at Tammy momentarily, and there's that little glimmer of a smile again. "You're lucky you're, like, really smart. You've probably got your OWLs in the bag. E's all across the board."
Tammy shifts uncomfortably. "You're really smart, too, though," she points out. When Debbie only gives a soft, disbelieving snort, she fixes her gaze seriously on the girl's side profile. Follows the straight line of her nose, the slope of her cheekbones. Her eyes are framed by long, dark eyelashes, and her mouth is set carefully in a line. Tammy frowns and insists, "I know you get good grades. I bet you'll do just fine on your OWLs."
"It doesn't just happen naturally for me, though. Not like it does for people like you. Or my brother." Debbie runs her fingers through her hair, shakes them free so that it falls back to partially obscure her face from view. "Did you know I'm the only Ocean to not get sorted into Slytherin? Like, ever."
Tammy shakes her head before realizing that the defensive curtain of Debbie's hair means she can't see it. "No, I didn't," she answers, a little belatedly, because the other girl seems to be waiting for a proper answer. Is that another thing they have in common, besides the place where they're sitting? Debbie is the only Gryffindor in her family, and Tammy is the only witch in hers. They stick out when you look at them closely.
Debbie nods, hair shifting so Tammy can see her eyes again. They flicker up to look at the stars, maybe pinpointing one in particular. "Maybe that's why I feel like I have to work so hard."
NOTES | Thank you so much for reading! Reviews and favourites make me happy, and also send me emails to remind me that I should update this fic again, so if you have a minute to drop a comment, I'd love that. See you next time (in hopefully not too long) for summer vacations, someone making a sort-of bold but still soft decision, and some sad things. Because let's be real, this is me. There are going to be sad things.